


And The Moon Rose In Their Eyes

by gala_apples



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cryptozoology, F/F, F/M, M/M, Other: See Story Notes, Werewolves, light objectification kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-13 20:32:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11192865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: In a world where turning twenty two means turning into a different species, Michael is really beginning to hate being the youngest in his relationship.





	And The Moon Rose In Their Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> I'm hesitant to tag this with xeno-kink, because Michael makes the point that it's not REALLY what he feels. That said, there is a mention of sexual excitement while some of them are in wolf form. You decide if that squicks you.
> 
> Slight age fuckery ahead. I needed them to all be the same age.
> 
> Also, standard RPF disclaimer: I have made up everything mentioned about family, purposefully. I don't like including references to outsiders in RPF.

0.  
It’s crazy, how much is on the line. Meg turns twenty two in a few months, the first of them to go. Before then everyone needs to decide on what clan to join. It’s not as easy as the stupid school orientation quizzes make it seem. There are a lot more factors than personality type.

For one, they have to decide if their relationship is strong enough to declare eternity together. Not all clans have soulmates. Sasquatches couldn’t give a fuck; they sleep around with no strings then walk away as easily as they pick bugs out of their teeth. Slendermen turn asexual, and it’s a good thing, their obsessive stalking of children would have the wrong tone otherwise. That said, most clans do imbue their members with immortal love. Vampires certainly have that trait. So do centaurs. 

They also have to decide if they one day want kids. Clan isn’t hereditary. It’s not like likelihood of addiction, or eye colour, or ability to taste tannins in wine. Those are between a person and their DNA. Clan however is between a person and the gods. Most people don’t have kids before second puberty - or at least they don’t anymore, it’s a generational thing. Because of that natural delay, it’s assumed you’ll join a kid friendly clan if you some day want kids. Vampires make fine parents as long as the soccer matches are held after dusk. Krakens not so much. The average elementary schooler can’t breathe underwater.

The months turn to weeks turn to days until Meg’s birthday. Serious conversations are not really Michael’s strong suit. He’d never agree to Am Fear Liath Mòr; it would drive him crazy to be one of those mountain dwelling philosophical douches. Gavin knew better than to even suggest the clan, despite his love of hypotheticals. Aversion noted, they do have to have three. At least. 

Never mind strength of their love. Never mind want to nurture. The first list they actually sit down and compose is mostly based on fear and what not to be. There are some mighty difficult rituals. There’s mild disagreement on which clans have it the worst. What they can agree on is everyone gets a few hard no’s, even if the clan doesn’t sound awful to the other three.

Meg’s veto is ghosts. Committing suicide on your birthday is hard, even though you know you’ll be back and going through walls by morning. The submissive rituals are hard enough, the ones where all you have to do is go to a certain location and stay put until something happens. Actively stabbing yourself and fighting the instinct to staunch the blood is so much harder. 

Lindsay thinks phoenix is the worst. Setting yourself on fire? It doesn’t take a genius to know the pain must be terrible. The only upside is picking different accelerants gives you different flame colours. Michael thinks those that have doused themselves in turpentine are the prettiest when they rise from the ashes, but the clan doesn’t much interest him. He’d rather be something mammalian.

Gavin’s worst, a kelpie, almost makes Michael laugh. The kelpie ritual is just walk neck deep into a body of water and eat raw horse meat. You don’t even _die_ , you just stand there until your feet go numb, and when you swim/crawl to the shore, you see that your feet have turned into hooves. It’s easy for any single person, excepting Gavin, who gags even considering eating raw meat. But a hard no is a hard no, and they don’t bug him about it. Too much.

Eventually it’s decided, they’re sticking together forever. Eventually it’s decided, keep the option of kids. Eventually it’s decided, werewolves. Now all that’s left is waiting for Meg’s birthday, to see if she can physically follow through with what they’ve all intellectually agreed on.

 

1  
In the morning they gather at Meg and Lindsay’s apartment for Meg’s birthday celebration. On the counter is a cake that Lindsay must have picked up, but they don’t get very far into it. Out of the four slices cut, Gavin eats his, Lindsay eats her icing flowers, and Michael fills his fork with cake, but doesn’t actually eat a bite. It’s far more important to provoke conversation than to enjoy the black forest cake.

Michael strives to keep things light and superficial. The last thing they should be doing right now is talking about anything second puberty related. Discussing it will inevitably lead to second guessing. Attempting to change their mind as a group at the last minute will only make things more confusing for Meg. Michael loves her too much for that. Light conversation is the most he can actually do to support her. Meg must be alone with doing the rites to bring forth her new clan. It’s a hundred percent imperative. Some clan-gods extinguish the existence of people who do their rites wrong. Some clan-gods consider improper rites an insult and leave them a wretched human. It’s hard to say what’s the worse fate.

Unlike some rituals, the werewolf one isn’t time sensitive. It’s awkward tension that pushes them all towards the car, not a sense of urgency. Lindsay climbs into the driver’s seat of the SUV without discussion; Gavin and Michael can’t drive and Meg’s in no state of mind to focus on road etiquette. 

The closest they can get is the parking lot on the edge of Bastrop State Park. Lindsay pulls the car to a stop and they all twist in their seats to look at Meg, like she’s just supposed to hop out and call out a jaunty ‘later’. It’s so ridiculous it makes Michael want to snort. This isn’t exactly any other drop off. Acting like it is is making things worse. 

Michael opens his door and rounds the car until he’s at Meg’s side. He opens the front passenger door, leans into the seat and grabs her face with both hands. It’s the best way to give her a hard kiss. She’s not very reactive, but Michael gets why and can hardly take offense. “You’re only the first, Turney. You won’t be the only.”

The sound of the other doors slamming barely registers, but suddenly he’s being pushed to the side so Gavin can help her get out of the car. Their brief hand hold is as intimate as Michael’s kiss was, not to mention the way they lock gazes for a solid minute. 

Lindsay is next but by no means _last_. After her own kiss she says what Meg is probably dying to hear. “Look,” Lindsay starts. “We want you to be with us, but you do what you have to do. We’ll try to make it work, if it’s not what we planned.”

Meg nods. “I love you all. I’ll be back.” 

She starts her walk into the loblolly pines then. Michael huddles with Lindsay and Gavin for a few minutes, watching Meg get smaller and smaller as she carefully picks her away over the bumpy ground. It’s not the first birthday Michael’s been in the car for. He has two much older brothers, after all. But it’s the first time his stomach is twisted into knots. Neither Derrick nor Arnie said beforehand what clan they were going to join, and Michael had been too young to fill in the lack of detail with imaginative worry. Now he’s old enough, smart enough to know exactly how the wolf clan-god is going to appear -enormous and blinding white- as Meg lays on the cool soil. He knows it’s going to trot over until it’s close enough to bite down on her throat, and she’ll hemorrhage blood before her bones start shattering and reforming as she shifts for the first time. Unless at the last moment Meg can’t go through with it, and ends up sprinting to the nearest gas station to light herself on fire to become a soaring phoenix. And if that happens, what are they supposed to do? Join her, despite Lindsay being horrified by the idea? Break their pact to be in love forever and become werewolves without her?

No one speaks on the drive back to Lindsay’s place. Michael reaches out and puts the radio on, crossing his fingers that the dulcet tones of the siren DJ on Hot 107 will lift the mood a little. It doesn’t work, as proven by Gavin snarling “turn that guff off”. 

The hope and dread stays strong all day. They all feel touchy and snappish, almost every sentence spoken is reacted to with rolled eyes or sarcasm. But there’s a gravity between them that can’t be avoided. Any storm-out of a room is quickly followed by a reluctant reentering. It’s one of the worst days Michael’s ever had.

All that ends when there’s a howl outside their window. The piercing noise blooms a smile on his face, and he doesn’t have to look at his lovers to know Gavin and Lindsay are overjoyed too.

2.  
Moving companies are more trouble than they’re worth. Sure you no longer have to transport your shit, but is that even a good thing, really? Nobody cares about your shit like you care about your shit. The one time Michael’s dad hired one, three boxes had gotten misplaced, including a box of his intricately painted naga shells. Dad had been furious. Right now Gavin and Meg don’t care about material goods, but ten months from now Meg’s going to hate life if her anime box sets or cosplay equipment is gone. As much as moving is a giant -and he means _giant_ \- pain in the ass, it’s worth it to not upset future Meg or future Gavin.

Dropping the last box of the day on the floor, Michael sighs deeply. He uses the hem of his shirt to wipe the sweat off his face and doesn’t give a second thought to the wet smear it makes. It’s not like the back and armpits aren’t soaked through anyway.

Lindsay comes in from the kitchen, two cold bottles of green Gatorade in hand. She tosses one to Michael, then cracks open her own. Michael can only assume she’s taking a swig, he’s too busy gulping his own to watch her. He’s almost halfway through the bottle when Meg pads into the room and stands to put her front paws on his thighs. The additional weight on his already exhausted muscles is almost enough to tip him over.

“Fuckin’ shit, woman,” he exclaims. When she doesn’t return to her normal stance he adds “what do you want from me?”

After some trial and error -the only way any interspecies communication happens these days, Meg and Gavin have not been keen to shift back just to talk for a sentence or two- he figures out she wants a squirt of Gatorade. Michael’s not sure if it has any additives that animals aren’t supposed to have, but he has to assume she’d shift to human if it bothered her stomach. He takes one last swig, then squirts the rest of it her mouth, a continuous stream she seems to enjoy. Green’s always been her favourite flavour. Purple is Gavin’s, but he’s not home right now. As far as Michael knows, he’s probably at a meat club, where predator adults go to enjoy the finer cuts without taking down a beast themselves. Michael’d fucking die laughing watching Gavin try to hunt down his own meal.

Everyone knows that the first few years after second puberty shifter clans spend the majority of their time as the non-human class, if not stay that way exclusively. Intellectually Michael was prepared for that. Practically, not so much. He and Lindsay are the sole responsible beings now. Tasks that used to get divided four ways are divided by two. Not too bad for basic days, but then there are days like today...

Today was the last day on Meg and Lindsay’s lease. Subletting was a good temporary solution, but as of today they either had to commit to another year or get out. The latter makes the most financial sense. Unfortunately that means cramming all the belongings of a two bedroom apartment in Michael’s tiny fixer upper house, along with the shit Gavin moved in a month ago. The plan is to sell their duplicate furniture according to which one of the four has the best item, but at this point, exhausted after a whole day of carting shit across the city, it seems like such a distant goal.

“Can you rub my fuckin’ feet before they explode?”

“I dunno, can you rub mine?” Michael doesn’t feel all that much better than bursting nerves and tendons.

They end up in Michael’s bed. Michael’s actual bed, because he has a thick pillowtop new enough that it’s still springy, and the others’ mattresses decline in quality until you get to Lindsay’s relic from high school. The bedroom is a safe place for privacy. Gavin and Meg have been oddly averse to going anywhere near the bed. Michael doesn’t get it, but he doesn’t have to understand to be grateful to not have a hundred plus pounds of hot, mildly smelly wolf against him.

“If this is what it feels like to be a couple, it sucks,” Lindsay complains. They’re facing each other, feet in each other’s laps and hands, and Michael doesn’t have to look up to know his girlfriend has a pout on her face.

“No shit,” is his response.

“I mean seriously, how does shit get done?” Lindsay glares at the kitchen whiteboard. The way it used to work was as a group To Do list, a dozen or two items they’d cross off in different colours of marker as they’d complete something. Turns out twenty jobs between four is far different than twenty jobs between two. 

“I vote living in filth and drinking enough that we don’t notice,” Michael answers.

Michael knows how he’s feeling is dumb, unfair, hypocritical. In September, when he’s shifted for the first time, nothing will make him don his human skin. Then it’ll be Meg’s job as the most experienced to manage the human stuff that just can’t be avoided. Awareness that he’s a hypocrite only makes him feel more pissed off. And it’s only going to get worse when Lindsay does her ritual and he’s alone. The next few months are gonna suck.

3.  
If there’s ever a conversation you’re not supposed to bring up at a dinner party, it’s cross-generation relationships. Like money, politics, and alternative worship, everyone’s going to have an opposing opinion and generally be astounded that others can comprehend anything else. What makes cross-gen dating even worse a topic is the legalities of it. It’s legal to worship a god who has nothing to do with the mortal plane and only interacts after death. Weird, but legal. It’s far far murkier to love someone not currently the same species as you. The only thing that both pro-human and pro-clan activists can agree on is that someone’s consent is being violated.

It’s not something Michel’s talked about at a dinner party either. He and Gav and Lindsay and Meg aren’t even dinner party types. Better booze and swimming and filming shit you regret in the morning than artisanal cheese plates and six forks beside two spoons laid on vintage cloth napkins. What little conversation they had about it amounted to _I can’t see it coming up_ and _this isn’t really a conversation we need to have_. Michael’s not blaming his currently uncommunicative lovers, he didn’t think it was necessary either. It’s just frustrating.

It’s not like he wants to eat out wolf pussy. That’s not the problem he has. The problem is he’s developing a new kink and no one will stay human long enough to discuss it with him.

One by one his werewolf lovers have stopped sleeping on the bed. Fine, if a little lonely to a guy who’s used to at least four or five sleepovers a week. He adjusted. Or he did until Lindsay turned twenty two and became the catalyst for Michael’s current problem. 

The night Lindsay came back from Bastrop State Park Michael crawled into bed resigned to be alone, resigned himself to rolling over in the night to land in nothing but cold spots. Except a few minutes later Lindsay somehow pulled the sheet off the bed and dragged him onto the floor. Then Gavin, Meg and Lindsay all piled on, yawning the way a human would, rubbing their faces with their paws. The only reason Michael allowed them to sleep on top of him was because it was too much of a hassle to get them up, and off, and remake the bed. Except it happened again, and again, until settling on a few blankets on the floor with three werewolves became the new norm. For the last month his role has been relegated to mattress, and he likes it. In a weird way.

The core issue with cross-gen lovers is the lines blur. The definition of normal behaviour blurs. Lindsay sometimes, and Meg, but mostly Gavin, will shift to human when they want to get laid. Michael’s too young, libido too strong to resist. And the best thing about blowing your werewolf boyfriend is that Gavin can’t resist the temptation to go primal and start face fucking him. Gavin loves oral, any genitalia applicable. He is not, however, fond of suffocating. Spend his life with his mouth on Michael’s dick? Fine. Choke on it and die? Not so much. Michael understands the limit, he does. But Gavin being unwilling means he thinks it’s not fair to reciprocate that way, so Michael used to not get the face-fucking he really deserves. But being a wolf has changed Gavin, a bit, and the moral code of reciprocity doesn’t really come up anymore.

It always ends the same way though, no matter the fun of the sex. The second they’ve both come, Gavin always shifts back. Sometimes it’s literally mid-kiss, lips on Michael’s become a tongue swiping up his face. And then Gavin curls up on his torso and falls asleep. The whole room still smells like spunk and there’s one werewolf on him, and two slinking in to join their blonde mate. How’s his id supposed to interpret that? Objectification kink, is Michael’s answer. Zero for three for answers from his datemates, because they won’t shift long enough to talk. All the taboo creators are right. Cross-gen relationships are awful.

4.  
Waking up from the ritual is an explosion of experience.

The thousands of smells coming at him from all angles is what’s instantly noticeable, the sense practically screaming for attention. It’s overwhelming enough that Michael briefly considers shifting back to human. But he can’t, or won’t. Not when he can hear a hiker singing to herself, miles away. The range is astounding, and the ability intrigues him. More than that the song is soothing, and gets him through his initial panic.

The third altered sense he notices would probably be classified as touch. The sun feels warmer now, and there’s a breeze Michael could swear wasn’t present when the wolf-god ripped out his throat. Turns out you can read all the second puberty prepbooks you want, but you can’t truly understand the difference between skin and fur until you feel it. It probably goes for skin and feather, or skin and scales as well, but honestly Michael doesn’t really care to hypothesize. 

Actually, that’s the thing. He gets now what has subconsciously been bothering him for months; why his lovers have chosen time and time again their wolf form over keeping him coherent company. To put it bluntly, he’s drained of Give A Fuck. It’s not that he’s not intelligent enough to grasp the world around him. It’s that so much of it doesn’t ping as mattering. His emotions have been traded for sensations, and after twenty years of complicated if-then emotional flowcharts, to have it all fade to the background is an unexpected relief. You never realise how uncomfortable and worn down old shoes have gotten until you put your feet in a new pair.

One he thinks he can tolerate the myriad of input around him, Michael rises to his feet and begins the long trip back to the house. Home is about an hour’s drive from Austin. Wolves can run around forty miles an hour, but only in twenty minute bursts. It’ll take a while, so best to start immediately.

An hour into his trek he can see why Meg and Lindsay didn’t get home until afternoon, and Gavin later than that. It’s difficult to run straight home and not swerve off to investigate a particularly tantalizing scent, or capture some small prey animal. Not to mention his field of vision is down significantly, and it seems triggered by small movement much more than it was when he was human. Still, Michael’s still got enough brain to focus on the task at hand; getting home and making sure his pack are as compatible now as the lore promised they would be.

Eventually he’s in his neighbourhood, then on his street, then running up the sidewalk. The door’s not even difficult. Shortly after Meg turned twenty two they bought a four legged friendly door at Home Depot. It always made human him frustrated, the way it would lock, but he appreciates it now.

It takes a search of the house to find his lovers. Traces of their scents linger on everything, but it’s not until he’s entering the bedroom that he finds them, curled into a cluster on the floor bedding. Finally, outstandingly, the aversion to his awesome pillowtop bed makes sense. The mattress _stinks_. It’s by far the worst offender in this afternoon’s game of Normal Objects Suddenly Reek. He wants to apologise to his pack for every single grumble he made. He can’t possibly sleep in it tonight, maybe never again. Might as well sleep in a pile of broken light bulbs and mouldy bread.

Never mind the bed though. There they are, the people that Michael loves. Waiting for him in their new skins, just like he waited for each of them to come home in his old tattooed flesh. It’s remarkable how different they all smell. It makes sense. He’s basically traded in vision for smell and there’s no question they used to be very different feasts for the eyes. Gavin smells like pine needles and grass wet with melting frost. Lindsay smells like leaves decomposing to mulch. Meg smells like the smoldering burn of dry mast finally bursting into flame. 

Michael breaks into a run until he’s close enough to leap onto Meg. He loves them all, but he’s missed her the longest. Her dense form takes his weight with ease. It’s such a relief to rub against someone his own species. The cross-gen relationship has been grating on him, but now he’s a part of them again. He’ll never _not_ be with them again. Unlike the prior months of increasing loneliness, being the youngest and last to reenter the world won’t actually make Michael suffer. Full time human to full time wolf makes sense. Full time wolf back to full time human doesn’t. Lindsay and Meg and Gavin will just be part time. Michael will have company, in whatever form he happens to take. He’ll have love.

Gavin joins the tussling after a moment, not ready to let Meg have all the attention. Michael knows wolves don’t laugh, but fuck is he enjoying this. It gets even better when he lets Gavin pin him, and Gavin takes the victory by resting his head and making no attempt to move. Human or not, providing a bed is still something Michael’s into. Good luck for him that puppy piles are only one step away from wolf piles. He sees a lot of it in his future.


End file.
